Terry Southern is shown at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968.

REVIEWS OF TERRY SOUTHERN'S BOOKS:

'The Magic Christian' (1960)
". . . bizarre . . . less a novel than a practical joke . . . What all of this assorted dada leads to, besides some very funny samples of the author's vacuum-packed humor, is anybody's guess."

'Candy,' written with Mason Hoffenberg (1964)
". . . a sternly moral satire on sexual attitudes that might have indeed been a comic classic, had the authors seen fit to develop their ideas much beyond the café-table stage."

'Red-Dirt Marijuana: And Other Tastes' (1967)
"Each of these four stories is a crisp, poignant and often telling portrait of a conciliatory relationship. Mr. Southern's dialogue is not just good. He is both acutely aware of, and the absolute master of the nuances . . . The other short stories were disappointingly slick. . . . [They] seemed written long ago, before the author had learned what he wrote best."

'Blue Movie' (1970)
". . . it's a satire-- mostly on itself. Although it has no redeeming social value, if that's what you're looking for, I think a good case can be made for it as an anti-aphrodisiac. . . . It is pornography without Portnoy."

'Texas Summer' (1992)
"'Texas Summer,' a revisitation of two stories in Mr. Southern's 1967 collection, 'Red Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes,' counts as a new book, but hardly as new work. . . . Southern pads rather than expands his original story."

REVIEWS OF TERRY SOUTHERN'S FILMS:

'Dr. Strangelove' (1964)
". . . beyond any question the most shattering sick joke I've ever come across . . . one of the cleverest and most incisive satiric thrusts at the awkwardness and folly of the military that have ever been on the screen."

'Casino Royale' (1967)
"More of the talent agent than the secret agent is flamboyantly evident in 'Casino Royale' . . . [T]he screen is . . . absolutely teeming with wild impersonators of James Bond, ranging from David Niven to Woody Allen and from Ursula Andress to Deborah Kerr."

'Barbarella' (1968)
"The movie, written by Terry Southern and seven other writers based upon a comic strip, rapidly becomes a special kind of mess. All the gadgets of science fiction . . . is turned to all kinds of jokes, which are not jokes, but hard-breathing, sadistic thrashings, mainly at the expense of Barbarella, and of women."

'Candy' (1968)
". . . faithful in dreary spirit to the best-selling novel by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, and also to the larger, more seriously received schools of writing and cinema, which keep prolonging little trite, messy spasms of mediocrity and mistaking them for the courage to go too far."

'The Magic Christian' (1970)
"'The Magic Christian,' Terry Southern's best book . . . is funny, uncomfortable and without an ounce of benevolence. . . . The meeting of [director Joseph McGrath] with his material produced not so much a tension as a revaluation-- and the results turn out to be a mixed bag."

OTHER ARTICLES ABOUT AND BY TERRY SOUTHERN:

No Humorist(1960)
In a brief profile, Southern told The Times that he was working on "a fat, serious novel."

Letter: Exact Genesis, by Terry Southern (1970)
Responding to a Times review of "Easy Rider," Southern explains how Dennis Hopper's role evolved from one created for Rip Torn.

Terry Southern, Screenwriter, Is Dead at 71(1995)
Southern's obituary quotes an interview in which the author spells out his artistic credo: "The important thing in writing," he said, "is the capacity to astonish. Not shock -- shock is a worn-out word -- but astonish. The world has no grounds whatever for complacency."

The Hot Day Terry Southern, Cool and Fatalistic, Strode In(1995)
Recalling Southern, Jeff MacGregor writes, "He was at once a serious, outrageously understated satirist and a quietly sophomoric Zen comedian; a patriotic anarchist, an existential Texan, a prankster tragedian, a devout nonbeliever and a sunny fatalist."